Ram Puniyani A video of Shashi Tharoor speaking at Oxford on a debate related to the colonial period has been ‘viral’ on the social circuit for a while. In this video Tharoor makes a passionate plea to the British that they make reparations for the losses to Indian economy during the British rule. He puts…
Ram Puniyani Gujarat violence (2002) was horrific. In this, after the burning of train in Godhra in which 58 innocents died, the same tragedy was made the pretext to launch the massive violence in which over one thousand people perished. In the aftermath of that I got many occasions to visit different parts of Gujarat…
Ram Puniyani After staging the Yoga spectacle on 21st June 2015 on Rajpath, Delhi, the Modi government now plans to celebrate Rakhi, Raksha Bandhan on a grand scale in late August. This plan has full approval of its parent organization, the RSS. Now a Hindu religious festival will be given the status of a national…
Ram Puniyani The World at large has suffered massive inhuman acts of violence, terrorism in the name of Islam. There are many glaring insane, cruel acts which cannot be forgotten and condoned in any way. Be it the killing of nearly three thousand innocent people in the attack of 9/11 (which was upheld by Osama…
Ram Puniyani The coming to power of Narendra Modi in a way gave an open license to all the affiliates of RSS combine to indulge in open hate speech against the religious minorities. The current agenda behind the hate speech is to consolidate the communal polarization of the society along lines of religion. The well…
Ram Puniyani Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made it a point to keep visiting temples when visiting other countries. His visit to Dhakeshwari Mandir and Ramkrishna Math in Bangla Desh were part of his itinerary (June 2015). On the heels of this he is planning to visit the oldest mosque in India. This happens…
Ram Puniyani Many a social and political processes related to projection of some icons and undermining of the others have intensified during last few years. Even during the last regime of NDA led BJP rule from 1998, Savakar’s portrait was unveiled in the Parliament. At one level the game of undermining some icons and projecting…
Ram Puniyani In contemporary times, religions’ identity is being used as cover for political agenda. Be it the terrorist violence or the sectarian nationalism in various parts of the World, religion is used to mask the underlying politics. While one was talking of separation of religion and politics many decades earlier, the times have been showing…
Ram Puniyani The PEW Research Center has released a report (2nd April 2015); which gives the projections of populations in times to come. It says that in India the population of Hindus will fall down from present 79.5 % to 76.7% and the Muslim population will rise up to 18% by 2050. The population of Indian Muslims…
Ram Puniyani The debate about our national anthem is a ceaseless one — the ones related to undermining Jana Gana Mana and pushing forward Vande Matram, so to say. To undermine the Jana Gana Mana time and again, questions have been raised about its having been written in praise of George V, the king of…